So, here we are. Beginning the middle year of the 2020s and about to end our stay in Antarctica. About now is the time when people often say " the year went so fast!" but when I think about when it was that I was last at home it is very difficult to picture so I am thinking it hasn't really gone that fast. What is for sure however is that the end is approaching very quickly. The RSV Nuyina is due to arrive here at Mawson Station on 21st January which is only 13 days away.. yes we are all counting in days now! In the drawer where I keep my shoeboxes that Leanne sent down for me to open at the start of every month, there remains only one box for February.
I have packed up all my UPE ( Unaccompanied Personal Effects ) and taken them over to the Green Store ( Warehouse ) and they have been tucked into the Sea Container ready for loading onto the ship. This is a bit of a bummer because it means I don't have access to lots of hobby things that have kept me amused in the time I have spare when we are not outside looking at and doing Antarctic things. We are allowed to take three bags with us on the ship not weighing more than 15kgs each. That includes whatever clothing/cameras/books etc we want to take to keep ourselves amused on the approximately 18 day voyage back to Hobart. Once back I will have a couple of days back at the Australian Antarctic Division Head office in Kingston for some Technical De-briefs and then.. I'm going home!
The last month has seen a fair bit of activity with obviously Christmas and New Years celebrations. Christmas was pretty weird without any family or friends from home about ( although I did make several video calls on Christmas Day ). It was sort of a white Christmas with the sea ice still thick and plentiful but precious little snow about. We have had top temperatures up to three degrees above zero for the last month so snow has been rare, although it tried to rain one day which was very weird. I ran outside just to feel the water on my face... it was kind of sleety rain but I'm calling it rain. That's the first time we have seen anything like that since we arrived. Leanne sent me a video of a big downpour at home last month and it looked like a very strange event to me!
On the 21st of December we had the Summer Solstice, so I thought I would see what midnight looked like here in Antarctica on that day... see below.
Above: Aaron, one of our Sparkies, and I bought the same shirt in Hobart a year ago. It took us 10 months to wear it on the same day.
Below: Head office in Kingston called our Station Leader on Christmas Eve and desperately wanted us to send a Christmas picture of everyone on Station doing Christmassy things, so we dutifully tromped off to the nearest hill overlooking the edge of the ice plateau and looked as Christmassy as we could.
New Years Eve saw our band play its last gig for the year. A couple of ring ins from the summer crew boosted our talent pool a little and also boosted our enthusiasm to play again. We churned out 11 songs on the night ranging from Helping Hand by the Screaming Jets to Long Way to the Top by AC/DC. After many times being asked if I could play the bagpipe "bit" from Long Way to the Top I finally gave in to the inevitable and learnt how to play all 6 notes or whatever it was.
The trick was not the tune but how to make it work with a band with guitars and drums which I had never done before. In the end it came out all right and I can tick that off as done.. not that it has been a big goal in my bagpiping life. The usual hunt for a band name ended when we remembered the Chinese word for Penguin literally translated as "Business Goose" .. I guess because they thought it looked like a goose in a suit.. so Business Goose it was for our last hurrah.
Above: Rhys ( Mechanic ) on drums, Me on Bass, Jason D (BoM Observer ) Lead Guitar
and Darryl ( Summer Plumber ) on Vocals and Guitar
Below: Our version of Its a Long Way to the Top
After New Years came and went we had a few birthdays and 10 of us decided to head out to Rumdoodle Hut up on the ice plateau for one big last hurrah up there. We had perfect Antarctic summer weather and plenty of music as a few adventurous souls took some Large speakers and a mix deck up with us.. along with a generator to power it all.
There was lots of loudness and dancing in all sorts of places with a few heavy heads in the morning. As well as that there was the usual spectacular scenery which by now we are having to remind ourselves to stop and look at.
Below: The Hagg Cabooose doubles as a very handy Bar.
Above: Rumdoodle Rave
Below: Rumdoodle Scenery - Yellow Tents just visible below as the hut only holds 5 people.. some slept well .. others not so much in the 24 hour daylight.
On the morning we were to head back to Station we learned that the Chinese DC3 aircraft that had brought the summer crew over from Davis Station to us was going to land on the ice "Airstrip" up on Plateau only about a 15 minute drive in the Haggs from Rumdoodle Hut. So we packed up and headed off to see the excitement. Calling the landing area an "Airstrip" is a bit of a stretch as it's just ice however lumpy it is due to winds/sun etc but is generally thought to be free of any crevasses big enough to swallow an aircraft or cause them grief by ripping off their wheels/skis. The DC3 is leased from a Canadian Company so had Canadian pilots but Chinese scientific crew. They were part of an international effort to map the edge of the Antarctic continent with ground penetrating radar.
They needed to re-fuel so we organised drums of Aviation Fuel to be brought up from the Station for them. These sorts of arrangements where countries help each other out with fuel or transport are common as we are all in the same boat when it comes to resources being scarce and difficult to arrange.
The aircraft first did a flyover of the "airfield" before coming around to finally land.
Above: The Pioneer Tracked vehicle ( also a Canadian thing ) about to re-fuel the DC3.
So after all this excitement it was back to Station and the normality of life re-asserted itself. We are pretty much all in a holding pattern at present with no major works being done and just maintenance if something breaks.
One of the things I have to do every Thursday is take Magnetics Observations ( below picture ), measuring the strength and variation in the Earths Magnetic field. The picture below is me pretending to take some as when I do them for real I can't take my phone or camera or wear anything metal/magnetic.. even my wedding ring comes off... as the smallest variation caused by these can be picked up by the instrument and wreck the 90 minutes work that is involved!
Below: On the wall of the Absolute Hut where I do the Magnetic Observations is the biggest spider I have ever seen... Antarcticus Ginormous... well ok only kidding. Its actually a "Sea Spider" and lives on the ocean floor here and is related to crayfish etc I think. That's enough to give you nightmares if you don't like spiders and creepy crawlies though!
So what now keeps us ticking along now in the dullness of waiting to go home, as it has all through the last year, is each other. One of the little rituals that has developed for a few of us is to have breakfast at "Cafe Mawson", which is basically a couple of comfy lounge chairs in the mess. The view is not bad, the food is OK ( it is free after all ) and the highlight is generally trying to figure out what creature or object has been created by the milk in the froth of someone's Cappuccino. Then we will yak and solve the problems of the world ( or at least the problems of the coming day ) before heading off to enact our plans.
Above: Cafe Mawson 7:45am Tuesday
L-R Jason (BoM), Sophie (BoM), Me, Bridget (Stores Supervisor)
Once we get onto the Nuyina in a couple of weeks its going to be hard to find a quiet space as there will be 90 something Expeditioners heading home from Mawson and Davis Stations so quiet moments like this will be missed. But I guess we have to get used to becoming part of the world again and having many more people around. And I have to say, having family and friends around and going home sounds pretty dam good to me!
But before we can get out of here the sea ice needs to get its act into gear and rack off. Although its rotting, its still over a metre deep in spots and we need Horseshoe Harbour to be mostly clear of ice to allow re-suppply to happen. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.
Above: Melting Ice leaving weird shapes
Below: View towards the mouth of Horseshoe Harbour at present.. that's a lot of ice that has to break up and blow out to the ocean in only a couple of weeks!
So I figure there will be one more post on this Blog and then that will be it! My next post will be from the Nuyina and then its all over. We are theoretically due back in Hobart on February 19th but we will see!
Comments
Post a Comment